Les•bi•an (noun)
graphic by Lauryn Alejo / painting from Pinterest
Les•bi•an (noun)
“A female homosexual. Of, relating to, or characterized by sexual or romantic attraction to other women or between women”
I reread the entry in the dictionary, the leatherbound book heavy in my hands; heavy with the truth I’d been seeking out for years. Some women liked women and I was one of them.
Growing up, I was never a girly girl. I never played with Barbies, I despised dresses, and I wouldn’t be caught dead in makeup. Parents would chuckle whenever I’d march past them in the park, covered in mud from climbing trees and digging in the dirt. Running around the playground with the boys I was labeled a tomboy. My idiosyncrasies were innocent enough but I soon began to realize that I was different from the other girls in bigger ways.
Watching princess movies growing up, most of my friends dreamt of being the princess at the top of the castle, waiting for their prince. The more movies I watched, the more I was interested in being the prince rescuing the princess. I dreamt of us going on grand adventures together. It would be the princess and I against the world. As the years passed and my friends began fawning over the dashing Jonas Brothers, I listened more intently to the Cheetah Girls. They’d swoon over David Archuleta, but I was starstruck with Selena Gomez. By the third grade, I knew I was different from the other girls but it wasn’t until I attended my first sleepover that I realized these were not superficial differences.
The sleepover started out like any normal sleepover. I was staying over my best friend’s house and we spent the night baking and watching Lifetime horror movies while indulging in junk food. We had just crawled into bed when she asked me which one of the boys in our class I had a crush on. Shrugging and muttering I didn’t think of our classmates like that, she was unsatisfied with my answer. According to her, everyone had a crush on someone in our grade. As she went on about how cute she thought Ben was and how Eric and I would make a good couple (solely because we were the same height), I stared into the dark, up at the ceiling. The more I thought, the more I realized I did have a crush and it wasn’t on a boy in our class. I didn’t get any sleep that night.
The next few days were a whirlwind as I tried to pay attention in class but spent more time in my head, trying to understand my feelings. Suddenly all those adventures I had envisioned with my favorite characters were no longer adventures between friends. Now every time Wizards of Waverly Place came on I realized the fluttering in my chest was not excitement for the episode but excitement to see Alex Russo. With this new realization came dozens of questions I was too afraid to ask. I felt I had no one to turn to. Who could understand what I was feeling? I was raised knowing men married women, no ifs, ands, or buts. It’s hard to pay attention in history when you’re experiencing an identity crisis.
At that point, I didn’t have the vocabulary to describe what I was going through. My parents were strictly Roman Catholic, the word gay wasn’t taught to my brother and I. I didn’t learn the words to describe my sexuality until the 6th grade. I spent three years thinking I was crazy or that there was something wrong with me. There was no way I could possibly like women, that simply wasn’t a thing. Or at least it wasn’t until one day, in my Social Studies class, I was enlightened. We had gotten off-topic and somehow started having a class discussion about an article that had just been published in the paper; a new character was joining the Archie comics, a boy named Kevin Keller, and his introduction was being met with heated debate. Confused, I asked my teacher why people were so upset at the news. I became more confused when she responded that he was gay, a word I was unfamiliar with. Sheepishly I raised my hand again, asking what that meant and why it was a bad thing, Her cheeks flushed and she instructed me to ask my parents to explain before hastily returning to our lesson. As we broke for lunch a friend of mine approached me in the cafeteria, advising me to lookup “gay” and “lesbian” in my dictionary when I got home.
Clutching my dictionary to my chest, I laid in my bed with my newfound knowledge. The definition described what I had known all along about myself. And yet it omitted a major part of my experience. This clinical definition failed to describe the joy I’d feel once I learned to accept my sexuality. It was unsuccessful in describing the sense of community I’d feel when I made other queer friends who had experiences similar to mine. And it didn’t describe the love I’d feel for my first partner, the happiness I felt when we walked hand in hand through the streets of the city. I am a lesbian, but I’m much more than a label.
Gabriella Vetrano
Blurb: Les•bi•an (noun)- A female homosexual. Of, relating to, or characterized by sexual or romantic attraction to other women or between women.